National Register of Voters given to Registered Political Parties

The Electoral Commission has printed out copies of the National Register of Voters as at 19 April 2017 for Registered political parties.

The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mr Suresh Chandra presented the National Register of Voters to representatives from the Fiji United Freedom Party, FijiFirst Party, Fiji Labour Party, National Federation Party and Social Democratic Liberal Party this morning.

“We have given five [5] Registered Political Parties a copy of the complete set of the National Register of Voters free of charge in order to help them prepare accordingly for the 2018 General Election,” said Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Suresh Chandra.

The Electoral Commission today also approved the rules governing objections and appeals to registration on the National Register of Voters.

Section 155(b) of the Electoral Act 2014 specifies that the Electoral Commission may makes Rules relating to voter registration and maintenance of the Register of Voters.

Currently there are no provisions where a person can lodge a complaint against a registration. The rules will create this process and allow for natural justice principles to be exercised during the adjudication process.

An appeals process has also been established to allow the Electoral Commission to finalize the verification of a voter.

The Fijian Elections Office [FEO] will print forms for the Objection and Appeals which will be widely circulated and uploaded to the FEO website. The FEO will also maintain a register of Objections and Appeals to allow for proper record keeping.

The National Register of voters contains the details of 605,997 Fijians eligible to vote next year.

All copies of the National Register of Voters were printed in-house by the FEO.

“We decided to print the copies ourselves in order to save costs in what is an annual exercise. This allows us to absorb costs which would otherwise have been spent on paying for copies of the National Register of Voters,” says Supervisor of Elections, Mr Mohammed Saneem.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party did not attend and a copy of the National Register of Voters will be delivered to them.